He hadn’t even said it aloud, but she’d known.
“I’d like to say I can’t believe he’d do something like this, but I can,” he bit out, still blinded by fury. “What does he have on you, Tori? You can tell me.”
She scrubbed her hand down her face, and her body shook as she drew in an uneven breath.
“I was going to tell you. I just hadn’t figured out when. And how.”
“I’m listening.”
No matter how bad it was, he didn’t care. Tori had become a part of his world.
“When I was in college, I needed money. I had the scholarships and stuff that paid for books and classes, but it wasn’t enough. Not with rent and food and everything else being so high.”
None of this was a shock so far, but she clearly wasn’t to the scandalous part yet.
“Go on.”
“You’re going to be so disappointed in me,” she muttered.
Dismayed at her assumption, he caught her chin and made her look at him.
“Over the last couple of months, I’ve learned so much about you, and how hard things were. I have nothing but respect for you, Tori.” He gave her a small smile. “So, unless you were whacking people for money, I’m not going to judge you.”
Tori gave a watery laugh and her lashes fluttered down. “That was it. I was totally offing assholes.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“No, I wasn’t.” She touched his chest before lifting her head to meet his gaze. “I was making decent money with a GamerGirlFans account.”
The words meant nothing to him.
“Okay. Can you tell me more about what that is?”
“It’s a subscription fan site. Any legal adult can join and post stuff. Generally, it’s stuff that’s too hot for the usual social media networks. People subscribe and pay a monthly fee that the content creator sets.”
Her words ran around in his head, kind of making sense, but still kind of not.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s a site where people pay to watch girls playing video games. And so people subscribed to watch me play video games...”
“Okay.”
“In a tank top and underwear.”
Chapter Twenty
Tori waited forhim to stiffen or shove her away in disgust, but he was surprisingly calm.
She lifted her head so she could search his gaze. “Are you freaking out? It’s okay if you are.”
“No. I’m just processing it.” He shook his head, his eyes full of wonder. “This is a thing? People actually pay for that? Watching you play video games in your underwear?”
“Oh, they sure do. It’s not really about sex to these subscribers. You can find all that stuff free online anyway. They want the fantasy. The girlfriend experience, so to speak.”
He gave a slow nod. “Yeah, I can see how that would work.”
She had to come completely clean since she’d made it this far. “I went completely topless one time in the three years I did it. There was a huge buildup to the moment, and I made a hell of a lot of money. But I promise that’s as far as I ever took it.”